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Vulgar Opinions: Bigotry In Our Back Yard

If you haven’t heard about it yet (and you will eventually), a Niagara Falls Reporter writer, Lenny Palumbo, has published an article containing some damning anti-gay language. Just in case the Falls Reporter wants to pull this article and pretend this never happened, I have taken the liberty of copying the text of the article and saving it here.

The gist of my response to the Falls Reporter, which I have conveyed in two phone messages, is as follows:

I see an article by Lenny Palumbo on your website that is troubling to me as a member of the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered ) community. I am bisexual, for the record, but that’s hardly the point.

Palumbo writes things like;

“Meanwhile, the NHL’s abominable, “You Can Play” promotion, which all but endorses homosexuality in hockey, is among its top priorities.”

He goes on to say.

“enforcers are out, but gays are in. So why don’t they just hire Elton John as commissioner and be done with it?”

And

“Fortunately for Sabres fans, the team has not come out of the closet and the signing of tough guy, John Scott is an indication there might be some shred of manliness left in an otherwise emasculated organization that has much to prove in 2012-13.”

I’ve played hockey for years, I’ve never missed a game due to injury, and I’ve suffered in the ballpark of 20 broken bones. There are plenty like me, so Palumbo’s connection of being gay to being un-manly is nothing short of a joke.

But this isn’t about Palumbo, this is about his archaic viewpoints and about the community he’s denigrating. I’m not sure if anyone at your newspaper is aware, but last year Williamsville native Jamey Rodemeyer took his life at the age of 14 because he was being bullied online. Bullied with the type of language your paper has attached its name to in allowing Palumbo to pen such nonsense.

This isn’t the 60s and gays aren’t resigned to the closet anymore. In fact, Buffalo has such a thriving gay community that American Airlines nominated them in an international contest as the United States’s most up and coming gay city. To put it quite simply, we are everywhere, and we are only growing in support and number. Starbucks, General Mills, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook have all made donations to pro LGBT causes in the last six months. Running this article is akin to cultural suicide. But moreover, to denigrate a community as Palumbo has is just plain wrong.

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